[FRIAM] Subjective experience & free will

[Steve Smith]

Jon -

I like the practical nihilism (as I read it) in your reply.   There is
something deflating (of the ego?) about honestly contemplating/answering
these kinds of questions I think.  Deflating ~= Freeing?

I was most recently confronted via Ted Chiang's short story in his
recent collection "Exhalation" wherein a quantum-facilitated device is
invented which minimally allows people to communicate laterally with
parallel worlds.   The technical conceit of the story involves a "fully
shielded" pad of qubits such that when you first turn it on, you burn a
qubit which splits your multiverse line into two threads...   then
subsequent qubits can be used to exchange 1-bit messages with yourself. 
As the qubit pads got larger and larger, the possibility of
text-message, even voice/video became possible (albeit expensive) with
one's dopple-self.   The (long) short-story explored the social
consequences of being able to have such communications, ranging from
being able to pick up communication with the dopple-self of a dead loved
one (one who died in your thread but not in another) to being able to
team up with your alternate self(ves) to build a leveraged work team who
makes leveraged progress in each parallel line, to assembling ensembles
of fantasy sports-teams across parallel threads with the *realization*. 
No longer would it be "my team won the superbowl this year" but rather
"my team won 93% of all superbowls across an ensemble of N worlds".  
Another side-effect would be to have a the tip of your fingers a perfect
confidante... your dopple-self(ves) bifurcated when you start a new
qubit-pad knows your every intimate existence right down to the
quantum-state level, but then slowly diverges into an alternate
experience, etc.   

I suppose some might want to believe that our current quantum computers
ARE in some sense establishing this kind of formalizeable "Garden of
Forking Paths" or "Library of Babel".... Marcus?

- Steve

> "Who would be on your list?"
>
> I put more thought into this question over the last week than I thought
> I would. It is funny what questions bite us. The sad reality is that
> given a time machine (or better a T.A.R.D.I.S so that I can rely on its
> translator and mobility in space) I would very quickly realize that
> history has forgotten exactly those I would wish to meet. I would need
> a methodology for searching the past and updating what it is I value in
> meeting new people. I am unsure whether I would want to find those
> thinkers for whom I am simply a poor repetition or those whose ideas
> would move me closer to some as-of-yet undefined way of being. Maybe,
> I would seek those individuals so different from myself that I am
> inevitably executed only to regenerate back in the warm bosom of my
> T.A.R.D.I.S. What is funniest of all is that I could probably scrap
> the whole time thing altogether if I could find who here on Earth today
> I would want to meet. So far I am thinking Yo-Yo Ma or Katya Clover.
>
>
>
> --
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